Whistle

Music was an important part of life in ancient Peru, and a variety of instruments, including whistles, trumpets, drums, and flutes dating back to the earliest cultures are known. This small whistle (ocarina in Spanish) is one of a group of similar objects (1992.60.2, 1992.60.3, 1992.60.4) created by artists of the Cupisnique culture of Peru’s North Coast in the years between 1200 and 500 BCE.

These whistles were said to have come from site of Tembladera in the Jequetepeque Valley. All feature a similar construction: incised lines for mouths, facial decorations, pupils, and inter digit spaces. This whistle has circular eyes made with a reed or similar implement and a hole for the pupil. Traces of white and red pigments, applied after firing of the ceramic, remain in some of the incisions.

This whistle represents a person with an elaborate headdress of a type shown on other ceramics from Tembladera. These ocarinas are similar in construction and technique to a number of larger ceramics, also said to come from the site of Tembladera, that depict musicians, seated females, standing figures, and embracing couples (Alva, 1986; Lapiner, 1976).

Each whistle in the group of four has a large hole in the back into which the user would blow to create a sound and usually four smaller holes on the sides. These smaller holes allowed the tone to be modulated as the musician altered the number of open holes with their fingertips. The use of whistles in what may have been specific festivals or ceremonies persisted on both the north and south coasts of Peru throughout the development of subsequent cultures. In addition to whistles, later potters and metalsmiths created whistling vessels—bottles and other containers that would emit a sound when filled with liquids (see, for example, MMA 1978.412.167).

References and further reading

Alva, Walter. Ceramica Temprana en el Valle de Jequetepeque, norte del Peru/Frühe keramik aus dem Jequetepeque-Tal, Nord-Peru. Materialien zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichen Archäologie. Munich: C. H. Bech, 1986.

Bernier, Hélène. “Music in the Ancient Andes.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/muan/hd_muan.htm (originally published August 2009, last revised April 2010)

Burger, Richard L. Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992, pp. 90-99.

Burtenshaw-Zumstein, Julia T. Cupisnique, Tembladera, Chongoyape, Chavín? A Typology of Ceramic Styles from Formative Period Northern Peru, 1800-200 BC. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Norwich: University of East Anglia, 2014.

Burtenshaw-Zumstein, Julia T. “The “Tembladera” Figurines: Ritual, Music, and Elite Identity in Formative North Peru, Circa 1800-200 B.C.”, Ñawpa Pacha, Journal of Andean Archeology, 33 (2) (2013), pp. 119-148.

Elera, Carlos. "El complejo cultural Cupisnique: Antecedentes y desarrollo de su Ideología religiosa." Senri Ethnological Studies, No. 37 (1993), pp. 229-57.

Ikehara-Tsukayama, Hugo C. The Cupisnique-Chavín Religious Tradition in the Andes. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.448

Lapiner, Alan C. Precolumbian Art of South America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1976, pp. 44-47.